TW: depression, PTSD, mentions of sexual violence
15 years old.
That’s how old Bố (my dad) was when he fled Vietnam to escape political persecution by the Communists. This totalitarianism included forcing young men to enlist in the military and anti-Communists to labor in re-education camps until they got sick or died.
So Bố became a refugee, one of the hundreds of thousands of boat people separated from their families and homes. His escape happened a few years after April 30, 1975 when Saigon, his home, fell to the Communists. To this day, the Vietnamese American community acknowledges this date as Black April or Tháng Tư Đen, the anniversary of when they officially lost their beloved homeland.
Despite perspectives like Bố’s teeming with important history, academic texts about the Vietnam War continue to exclude the voices of Vietnamese American refugees. What were their journeys like? Where are they now? A Google search would not cast a net wide enough for the sea of stories out there yet to be told.
In the meanwhile, the reality is that many of the Vietnamese refugees who arrived at a young age in the U.S., such as my dad, are growing older. Time is of the essence to capture these legacies.
As such, I thought it would be valuable to reflect on and share Bố’s life story, especially as I transition into young adulthood and have time while I’m at home because of COVID-19. I hope that understanding my dad and his struggles can help me better understand myself now—where I came from and how that’s shaped who I am. Best of all, these stories transcend borders and time. They can benefit my peers as well, offering us necessary and meaningful life lessons as we enter the next chapter of our lives.
How separation from home and family changed him
A brief & simple childhood
In 1965, Bố was born in Saigon, Vietnam as Thành Vincent Hoàng, the first-born of nine children. Before even leaving the hospital, he was baptized Catholic and became a part of the minority religion in Vietnam.
At 12 years old, he started serving as an altar boy at Lộc Hưng, the local church. Earning this position was a great honor in the Vietnamese Catholic community, so my dad was more than happy to wake up every day at 5.30 a.m. He would walk through the dark streets and don his Vatican-style altar-boy uniform of a short, white robe over a red tunic at church.
The Fall of Saigon
For the next 15 years, the world my dad lived in remained fairly small. He stayed within his own neighborhood, which was a half-mile radius, only traveling from home to either school or church. This was the norm until April 30, 1975 when Saigon fell to the Communists.
That day, Bố came home to Ông Nội (my grandpa or my dad’s father) and Ông Nội’s friends from the army whispering in hushed, anxious tones. They had stashed big guns underneath the beds and, all day, the radio station played the recording of South Vietnam’s President Dương Văn Minh. He called for troops to surrender to the Communists right outside of Saigon. Ông Nội and his friends feared that the Communists would kill them.
Escaping the country
A few years later began Ông Nội’s multiple attempts to sneak his sons, Bố and Chú Thanh (my uncle or my dad’s younger brother), out of the country before they reached the age of conscription. Each time, Bố would cry because leaving home meant leaving forever with no guarantee of reuniting, let alone surviving. Sometimes he would only be told hours ahead of time that they were leaving.
But, most of the time, Bố and Chú Thanh never got so far as getting on the boat. Instead, they would wait at the meeting point for a signal that would never come. They had been scammed by boat-owners for money in exchange for an empty promise of escape.
On the seventh try, it finally worked.
It was Sunday, March 1, 1981. My great-grandfather stopped by the house around noon on his Honda motorcycle. He told my dad that he had five minutes to collect his things—two sets of clothes, and some photos of family and friends—and say his goodbyes.
Then 15-year-old Bố and 10-year-old Chú Thanh boarded a bus headed to the South, a ride that would last about six hours, and stopped at a safe house in the countryside. There, they hid until nighttime with other people also trying to escape Vietnam by boat. In the darkness, the group split up to get into canoes and paddle out to a slightly larger boat in the middle of the water.
Sixty-two people in total, mostly families, boarded this relatively small boat. This included my dad’s uncle-in-law and cousins. The trip had cost 10 ounces of gold, a large sum worth paying in exchange for the chance at safety somewhere else. Nobody knew the survival rate of escaping Vietnam by boat. All Bố knew was that Ông Nội had reminded him to do his very best, believe in himself and take care of his little brother.
Angry at God
Fear and trauma from losing all sense of familiarity and stability all at once manifested itself as anger in my dad. He had been taken away from his home and family, and put on this tiny boat in the middle of the ocean for an indefinite amount of time without guarantee of his or his brother’s survival.
“I was very sarcastic, bitter, [and] angry,” my dad recalled, as he stared up at the ceiling of my room. “I [thought] God [was] mean to me. I [thought] he played a cruel joke on me and made me suffer.”
His anger simmered throughout the years as the stress of survival never stopped. Even when Thai pirates sank their tiny boat in the middle of the ocean and a Thai fisherman with a ship saved them just in time, it seemed like a never-ending barrage of bad events.
The fisherman’s ship stayed in the middle of the ocean and there was no lower deck because it stored fish, so Bố and the rest of the Vietnamese refugees slept on the top deck under the burning sun. Thai pirates continued to board the unmoving ship, robbing and raping the people on board.
Even when the refugees finally reached the safety of a Thai village and entered the United Nations’ Songkhla refugee camp, Bố felt betrayed by God. The site was so crowded with over 2000 refugees that Bố slept on the beach sand and received barely nutritious meals.
He could send letters to Bà Hoa (their maternal aunt living in the U.S.), who sponsored Bố and Chú Thanh from Songkhla. But neither he nor Bà Hoa could write back to Vietnam to tell his family that they were still alive. His heart ached for his grandmother and little sisters back at home, so much so that he often dreamed about them in his sleep. Unfortunately, no such relations existed between Thailand or the U.S. and Vietnam yet.
In fact, Bố remembers harboring these negative feelings all the way through high school and the first couple years of college.
“He had a dark personality…I saw him as selfish [back then],” my mom said, reflecting on their college years together. They met freshman year at University of California, Irvine and became friends through a Vietnamese bible study group called the Mustard Seeds.
“At that time, he was all by himself [in America] so it made sense that he had no more energy to help other people…As I got to know him more, I realized that this guy wasn’t selfish. He was still young and yet took care of his entire family. He took up summer jobs and saved up all that money to support his entire family back in Vietnam and his [younger siblings] over here. That’s big. That’s a lot of stress and that’s why he was always grumpy.”
As she learned more about his home situation and the context of my dad’s story, my mom’s point of view changed. Rather than see him as self-centered, my mom saw him as more of a serious, responsible and focused person now.
“What made me start to pay attention to him is, one day, we drove down to eat phở…This [wasn’t] dating yet. We were just friends,” my mom shared with me. “On the way home, I was tired. It was after a test. I lay down in the car as he was driving. The minute I got home, I felt nauseated. I ran to the restroom and threw up. It [happened] so quickly that it was inside the sink, not inside the toilet. I was so tired that I threw myself on the bed and passed out.”
“Five hours later, I woke up and it was dark. I remembered [what had happened] so I went to the restroom, thinking, ‘Ew, I have to get my hands in there.’ [Instead], I saw the sink was sparkly clean and, in order to clean it, it wasn’t going to drain so you [would] have [had] to get your hands in there and scoop [it] out. [Your dad] did it, as a friend, and left…I saw something that day that was special about him.”
Forced to grow up quickly
So, from the young age of 15, my dad was forced to grow up quickly for the sake of his family and own survival. When he came over to the U.S., although family members provided basic necessities such as food and housing, they were busy with their own jobs and worries.
As a result, Bố took care of school on his own. He also tried to take care of Chú Thanh as much as possible, but was often busy trying to find a balance between his own homework and jobs during the school year. Even in the summer, Bố was always working, whether it was as a camp counselor at Boys and Girls Clubs of America, a security guard in Newport Beach or a dishwasher at Tosh’s BBQ restaurant. Though my dad expressed remorse at not being more present to mentor his little brother, Chú Thanh revealed a different side of the story.
“My brother? He [was] still more like a dad,” Chú Thanh recalled. “It took me a long time to call Ông Bà Nội ‘Mom and Dad.’ It took me a long time, even though I [would] look at their faces, face to face…My image of my mom was completely different from the time that I left [Vietnam]. I [looked] at them and the first thing that I [would] call my mom [was], ‘*Bác.’ I [didn’t] call her, ‘Mom.’”
*Bác is a formal Vietnamese title to show respect toward adults as old as or a little older than your parents.
As Chú Thanh said, if he were ever sick or in need of something, Bố would take care of him because their parents weren’t around. And, though my dad may wish he had spent more time with his little brother, Chú Thanh said that Bố did make an impact on his life. Whenever Bố asked for his opinion or to make a decision, it made Chú Thanh feel that his voice mattered and that he had control over his own life.
“Your dad came to me one time and [said], ‘I found $100! What should we do?’…The guy actually asked me, ‘What should we do?’ I still remember that,” Chú Thanh told me over the phone, remembering back to when they were staying in a refugee camp.
“I’m a kid, you know, so, ‘Okay, let’s go buy candy!’ was the first thing that came out of my mouth. When you look back, it’s not much but [that $100] had a lot of meaning. I remember [your dad] got me my first toy. It was an airplane…It had a wheel on the bottom and a wheel in the back. It was blue, red and white. Looking back, it’s a cheap toy but it had a lot of meaning. Imagine [being] 50 years old and still thinking about a small toy.”
How education saved him throughout his life
There weren’t many parts of his life that my dad felt he could control, from being separated from his family in Vietnam to supporting his brother and himself on a tight budget in the U.S.
But, when it came to learning, Bố felt like he was in the driver’s seat. When he worked hard, he felt that he could put his stresses aside and enjoy the learning process. More importantly, Bố dreamed of working hard enough to earn good grades and land a career that could support a way for his family to finally reunite.
At six years old, my dad knew how to read and, as he tells it, God or fate led him outside one day to his destiny as a lifelong learner. It was the middle of a blazing afternoon and everyone at home was taking a nap. Little Bố squeezed through the locked metal gate in front of the house. After wiggling through the gate, for whatever reason, he decided to turn to the right and keep walking. That day was so hot that Bố remembers the asphalt melting and softening under his bare feet.
Five minutes later, he found 100 đồng on the street and kept walking. Somehow, he knew to turn left, which is how he came across a bookstore. Using some of his newfound money, Bố bought math and writing workbooks that he used to teach himself. And as for the 80 đồng left over, over time, he rented and bought other books to read.
Bố read so much that, by 10 years old, a nearby bookshop keeper recognized him from his frequent visits. She would even let him stay in the bookstore while she went to the market. Bố loved to sit there and read because he would always finish the books on the same day that he rented them anyway. Despite not being monitored, he paid the shopkeeper for all the books that he had read in her absence.
In fact, when my family and I visited Vietnam a few summers ago, my dad’s uncle said that Bố would come over just to look at his bookcase full of books. Bố was always so stunned by the sheer volume of books that he was intimidated to ask if he could borrow any.
Years later, in a refugee camp in Indonesia called Pulau Galang, my dad stumbled upon an English class. He had been bored and walking around, and decided to stay to learn despite not being enrolled.
This passion and excitement to learn translated over to basketball too. At the beginning of high school, my dad had barely gone through American curriculum so he didn’t know how to speak English well yet. At the same time, he loved everything about basketball.
He would watch people across the street play basketball, consume books about basketball and religiously watch the Lakers play basketball on TV. When my dad started playing pickup games, he began learning a lot about slang and American culture, including how to say encouraging remarks such as, “Good job” and “Way to go!”
Most importantly, what he loved about basketball was that it is a meritocracy. Anyone can be the star of the court if they work hard enough and, even if they don’t score the most points, they can still be an integral part of the team. Especially as a Vietnamese American, Bố appreciated that basketball saw no bounds. No one cared about skin color, height, how well he spoke English or what clothes he wore so long as he had the skills to play the sport.
“I was playing with my Vietnamese friends and we were playing against a team of taller, [white] men who looked much older than us. I was the second-tallest guy on the Vietnamese team so [my Vietnamese friends] were intimidated,” Bố told me.
“But I said, ‘Don’t worry. We can beat the other team.’ I felt like it was my duty to set an example so I was very active and aggressive in playing. In fact, one of the other team players was an older man about 30 [years old] and 5 foot 8 inches tall…I basically jumped right on his back and got the rebound and, when he turned around, he saw this tiny little player.”
“The next night I came out to play, the guy who saw me play the night before was now [one of the] captains and had the first pick. He pointed and said, ‘I saw him play yesterday. I love his work ethic and I pick him,’ so I [thought he meant] the guy next to me who was 6 foot 2 inches tall,” Bố recalled, with a smile on his face.
“I was so flattered and proud that this team captain picked me. It never happened to me. So that game, I was ready to do battle to help this team captain win and I played very well that night. We won the game. I don’t remember the score but I remember that it was such a good feeling that someone recognized [my] hard work and [trusted] me with a responsibility.”
His genuine curiosity and love for learning has been apparent in all stages of his life. It comes as no surprise then that he later made it not only as an engineer but also as a doctor. These qualities are what also kept him going in life when all else seemed to be failing. And eventually, he was indeed able to help bring his family over from Vietnam to the U.S. and support them with all of the energy that he had put into learning.
He had remembered Ông Nội’s advice from so long ago before boarding that tiny boat and becoming a refugee: to believe in himself. My dad still repeats this advice to me today: If anyone else can do it, you can do it too.
How he achieved happiness but still struggles
Since then, my dad has been reunited with the rest of his family in the U.S. and most of them live within driving distance of each other in California. My grandparents have a house, his siblings all have their own families and jobs, and no one is struggling to simply survive anymore.
Before, on some days, he couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel and he felt so alone. Now, Bố can say that he is much happier than just a few decades ago.
Currently, he’s working as a doctor in the hospital emergency room and helping to fight COVID-19. He has always said it is an honor and privilege to serve his patients, and it rings true, now more than ever.
But this isn’t an American Dream story to fulfill some model minority myth. As my dad has shared, he has suffered from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because of his experience as a boat refugee. These conditions don’t just go away overnight.
While he is happier now, my dad still lives and struggles with the two, which isn’t helped by the fact that Asian communities stigmatize conversations about mental health. He’s still learning how to sit back and enjoy the moment.
Opening up about his story has definitely helped not just himself, but also other young adults who read this story and myself, as his daughter. It has helped me better understand how he came to be and how his story has shaped me.
As I metaphorically turn my graduation tassel from right to left and cross over into the world of young adulthood, I’ll be sure to thank Bố for helping me understand the significance of family, faith in the bigger picture, self-reliance and hard work.
It has helped me understand who I am in this world a little better.
Here are some songs that Bố listened to throughout his life that were meaningful, some of which call back to his Vietnamese background: